6 years ago: Michael Medved hates Catholics

We civil libertarians and Baptists view both the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment as necessary for the protection of religious liberty. We view these clauses as complementary. We believe that the establishment of a state-sponsored, official, privileged religion would disastrously, and unconstitutionally, prohibit the free exercise of religion.

People like Medved, however, see these two clauses as contradictory. They believe that the only way to guarantee the free exercise of their religion is to grant it official state sanction — to create an establishment of religion. Thus they view the Establishment clause as a limitation, a negation, of the Free Exercise clause. Some of Medved’s allies, people like … judge Roy Moore, unabashedly call for the elimination of the Establishment clause. Others take a subtler, more gradual approach, arguing as Medved does that certain broad privileges — like the posting of the Ten Commandments — should be granted to certain popular religions as a way of making the Establishment clause more elastic and less of a perceived threat to Free Exercise.

Unfortunately, the only text that ellipses before “judge Roy Moore” glosses over is the single word “disrobed.” Roy Moore is no longer a disrobed judge, having been re-elected to office last November, and that’s truly astonishing in the worst manner possible.

Carstonio

Sad that Medved, who is Jewish, allies himself with a religious and political movement that plainly does not like Jews. His bashing of Hollywood as anti-religion is not only simplistic, it also provides cover for anti-Semites like Laura Ingraham, who once crowed that Mel Gibson’s Jesus movie would “drive the anti-Christian entertainment elite crazy.” Medved’s allies are more or less reading from the Protocols forgery but substituting euphemisms for the Jewish references.

AnonaMiss

Every time Medved turns up in the news it gets my hope up for a Colbert Report Threatdown segment about it, and every time, my hopes are dashed. C’mooooon Stephen! Learn what Medved means!